In terms of handling node mobility in various mobile networks, two schools exist. The traditional connection-based model is built on the premise that the underlying network is connected, and views node mobility as undesirable. The mobility-assisted model considers mobility as a desirable feature, where routing is based on the store-carry-forward paradigm with random or controlled movement of mobile nodes. This research uses node mobility to enhance routing capability in a mobile network. A dual control planes model is presented, which includes the traditional S (stationary)-plane for routing among stationary nodes using connection-based message routing. In addition, a new control plane, M (mobile)-plane, is used for trajectory control of mobile nodes. The focus is on loosely controlled movement of mobile nodes to assist routing. The five goals of this work are the following: (1) Propose a generic framework for routing. (2) Offer flexible trajectory control of mobile nodes to balance several global objectives. (3) Explore the use of unicasting as a basic building block to support collective communication, including multicast, broadcast, anycast, gather, and gossip. (4) Extend the current model in the 2-D Euclidian space to the high-dimensional and non-Euclidian space. (5) Integrate different components in dual control planes and fine tune the system through an empirical study based on a set of well-defined quantitative performance metrics. This work is the first to integrate two schools of handling node mobility. The PI envisions that results generated from this research will provide guidelines for efficient routing in a wide range of applications, including the GENI project.
We propose to use the node mobility to enhance routing capability in a mobile network. A dual control planes model is presented, which includes the traditional S (stationary)-plane for message routing among stationary nodes using connection-based message routing. In addition, we introduce a new control plane, M (mobile)-plane, for trajectory control of mobile nodes. A message routing consists of a sequence of control plane switches, alternating between store-and-forward in S-plane and store-carry-forward in S-plane. Intra-plane and inter-plane communication is performed through contacts. In the M-plane, unlike most existing works that focus on two extremes of spectrums: random movement and tightly controlled movement, our approach focuses on loosely controlled movement of mobile nodes to assist message routing in a store-carry-forward paradigm.? The challenge lies in adapting the degree of control to support a certain degree of flexibility, such as using a dynamic node trajectory to maximize route sharing to minimize the number of carriers, while ensuring some desirable global properties, such as short average moving distance with respect to the Euclidian distance between the source and destination and a small number of relays to increase network capacity. We envision that the insights and results from this research will provide guidelines for an efficient routing process for a wide range of applications, such as social contact networks and vehicle networks where mobility plays an important role in information dissemination.
